Kidpinoy's End Day Part 1

 

The flickering candlelight cast long, dancing shadows across the cramped apartment. It was a humble celebration, but for Bien Regalado, it was everything. A lopsided chocolate cake, bought with the last of his meager savings, sat on the small table. Across from him, Rose’s eyes, the color of warm honey, reflected the tiny flames, her smile a beacon that cut through the perpetual weariness in his bones. Beside her, his Lolo (grandfather), his own eyes clouded by the white mist of blindness, tapped a gentle rhythm on the table with his gnarled fingers, a silent song of contentment. This was his sanctuary. For ten years, he had been Kidpinoy, the unyielding defender of the Philippines, a living legend whispered on the streets where he grew up. But here, in this room, he was just Bien. A boy celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday with the only family he had ever known.

“Make a wish, mahal,” Rose urged, her voice soft as silk.

Bien closed his eyes. He didn’t wish for strength or victory. He wished for this. For more nights just like this one, quiet and safe. He took a deep breath, the scent of sugar and melting wax filling his lungs, and leaned forward.

The world exploded in a storm of splintering wood and shattering glass. The door flew off its hinges, crashing into the far wall. Figures, sleek and dark, poured into the tiny space, their movements economical and brutal. Before Bien could even summon the wellspring of chi that coated his skin in an invisible, invulnerable armor, a hand clamped over Rose’s mouth, a gleaming blade pressed to her throat.

“Not a muscle, hero,” a voice, cold and accented, slithered through the chaos.

Bien froze, every sinewy fiber of his body screaming for action. He could feel the dragon’s essence churning within him, a tidal wave of power begging for release. But the sight of Rose, her eyes wide with terror, her body trembling against a hulking brute, chained that power down.

“A predictable, sentimental weakness,” a new voice chimed in, this one oozing with condescending amusement. A man stepped out of the shadows. He was impeccably dressed in a tailored silk suit, his silver hair coiffed to perfection. This was Baron von Hess, a name whispered in the darkest corners of international finance and espionage. “Ten years. Ten years we’ve studied you, Kidpinoy. Ten years of frustrating, expensive failures. You’ve toppled our regimes, dismantled our networks, and cost us… well, a truly obscene amount of money.”

“What do you want?” Bien’s voice was a low growl, his dark skin pulled taut over the taut muscles of his jaw.

“Want?” The Baron chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. “Oh, we’re past wanting. We are here for… repossession.” He gestured lazily towards Bien’s grandfather, who was being held by another operative. The old man, though blind, was resolute. “Let the boy go,” his Lolo commanded, his voice frail but firm. “Your fight is with him, not with us.”

A third villain emerged, a man named Silas Sterling, whose flamboyant attire and painted lips stood in stark contrast to the Baron’s severe elegance. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, old man,” Silas purred, tracing the line of Bien’s jaw with a manicured finger, though not quite touching him. “The fight is with all of him. Every last, precious, potent part.”

The Baron nodded to the man holding Bien’s grandfather. There was no grand gesture, no final monologue. Just a swift, sickening twist. A sharp crack echoed in the sudden silence, louder than any gunshot. The old man’s body went limp, a broken doll discarded on the floor.

A sound tore from Bien’s throat, a visceral scream of pure agony that had nothing to do with physical pain. It was the sound of his anchor being ripped from the bedrock of his soul. Rose’s muffled sob was the only other noise. The chi within him, once a controlled ocean of power, became a raging, directionless tsunami of grief. His focus shattered. His invulnerability, tied so intrinsically to his unyielding will, flickered like a dying flame.

That was the opening they needed. A fist slammed into his gut. Though it couldn’t break his skin, the force rattled his organs. Another blow caught him across the temple. He barely felt it. His eyes were fixed on his grandfather’s still form. The world swam in a haze of red fury and black despair. He was a god in chains of his own heart, rendered powerless not by kryptonite, but by love and loss. The last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him was the Baron’s triumphant, cruel smile.

(Baron von Hess’s Perspective)

The roar of the crowd was music. Baron von Hess stood on the central dais of his personally-designed arena, a monument to wealth, power, and hedonism. Below him, a curated audience of the world’s most elite villains—deposed dictators, rogue scientists, arms dealers, and corporate saboteurs—applauded with manicured hands. Spotlights swept across the opulent space, glinting off gold fixtures and the giant, wrap-around LCD screens that currently showed his own satisfied face, magnified a hundred times.

“Esteemed colleagues! Honored guests!” his voice boomed through the state-of-the-art sound system. “Tonight, we do not merely witness history. We end it!”

The crowd roared its approval.

“For a decade, one man, one boy, has stood in the way of progress. Our progress,” he continued, his tone dripping with theatrical gravitas. “He called himself Kidpinoy. A hero to the downtrodden, a symbol of hope for the masses.” He sneered. “We called him a nuisance. An obstacle. An infuriatingly durable financial liability.”

On his command, a platform rose from the center of the arena floor. Chained to a steel cross, hanging by his wrists and ankles, was Bien Regalado. They had ripped every shred of clothing from his body, leaving his sun-kissed, muscular form completely exposed to the thousands of leering eyes. The giant screens switched from the Baron’s face to a high-definition, slow-panning shot of the captive hero. Every taut muscle, every line of his sinewy physique, every mark from their earlier assault was displayed in humiliating detail. He was conscious, his head hanging low, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

“We threw armies at him. We engineered plagues. We funded insurrections. Nothing worked. His invulnerability was absolute, his stamina, seemingly infinite. We spent billions on research, trying to find the source of his power. Alien technology? A mystical artifact? A genetic mutation?” The Baron paused, letting the suspense build. “The answer, my friends, was far more… biological. And infinitely more poetic.”

(Bien’s Perspective)

The cold of the metal chains was a distant sensation. The ache in his body was a dull hum. The only thing that felt real was the gaping, howling void in his chest where his Lolo had been. He could hear the Baron’s voice, a disembodied drone of gloating, but the words barely registered. He was adrift in a sea of grief. Then, he heard Rose’s name. His head snapped up.

On one of the massive screens, they were showing a live feed. Rose, bound and gagged in a glass cage suspended high above the arena floor. Her eyes, red and swollen from crying, found his. The message was clear. His compliance was her life.

His focus sharpened, the fog of his sorrow pierced by a new, cold dread. He listened now, truly listened, to the words of the man who had orchestrated his ruin.

“…It wasn’t a secret weapon,” the Baron was saying, his voice resonating with the thrill of discovery. “It was a secret state. A biological imperative. The immeasurable chi gifted to him by his so-called dragon gods is intrinsically, irrevocably tied to his own life force. A life force he has kept… pure. Undiluted.”

Silas Sterling glided to the front of the dais, taking a microphone. “To put it in simpler, more delightful terms, darlings,” he cooed, his voice a silken weapon. “Our little hero’s power comes from his virginity! His decade of abstinence hasn’t just been a mark of his righteous character; it has been the fermentation process for the most potent energy source on the planet!”

A wave of murmurs and cruel laughter rippled through the audience. Bien felt a flush of heat crawl up his neck, a shame so profound it was almost as painful as the blow that had killed his grandfather. His most private, personal state, twisted into a weakness and broadcast as a prelude to his execution.

“His body is a cask,” the Baron boomed, regaining control. “And inside, a nectar of pure, liquidized chi has been aging for ten years. His seed, gentlemen, is his power. A tonic of invincibility. A literal fountain of youth and endurance.”

The screens now displayed complex biological charts and arcane diagrams, mapping the flow of chi through a human body, culminating in the reproductive system. It was a desecration of everything he was.

“And so, we arrive at the purpose of this glorious evening, which we have affectionately dubbed ‘Kidpinoy’s End Day’!” the Baron declared. “We cannot break his body from the outside. So, we will drain it from the inside. We will not kill him with a weapon. We will destroy him with pleasure. We will harvest his power, again, and again, and again, until this vessel of heroism is nothing but a hollowed-out, broken shell. We will take his strength, his soul, his very essence, and bottle it for our own use. His greatest virtue will be the engine of his ultimate, methodical, and exquisitely final destruction.”

A large, sterile-looking machine, all polished chrome and humming tubes, was wheeled onto the arena floor by technicians in lab coats. Bien’s eyes widened in horror as he understood its function. This wasn’t just an execution. It was an unmaking. They were going to milk him of his power, his spirit, his very identity, right here, in front of his enemies, in front of the woman he loved.

He pulled against the chains, the dragon’s chi surging in a desperate, grief-stricken frenzy. The steel groaned, but his will was fractured, his spirit wounded. He looked from the machine, to the leering face of the Baron, and finally, up to Rose in her glass prison. Her eyes were pleading, not for her own life, but for his.

“Let the harvest begin!” Silas Sterling shrieked with glee.

As the machine was positioned and the technicians approached, Bien Regalado closed his eyes. He couldn’t save his Lolo. He couldn’t save himself. But as the first cold, clinical touch prepared to begin his violation, a single, unyielding thought burned through the despair. He would endure. He would not break. He would remember the feel of Rose’s hand in his, the sound of his Lolo’s gentle humming, and he would use that memory as a shield. They could take his power. They could take his body. But he would die as Bien Regalado, not as their plaything. The end had come, but his defiance had just begun.